Fleshy Cosplays
by Honore - Form. MerlintoVivian
Summary: Keima Katsuragi was unfazed when the smiling demon of love waltzed into his world. After all, he was proof that nothing in his world was ever truly as it seemed. A Merlin story. For old readers, please refer to the author's notes.
1. Ayumi: root

**Disclaimer - Nothing is claimed by the author, except this story.**

* * *

"Who am I, you ask? I am the soldier of fortune, the master of a hundred ways to cut and the thousand ways to kill, Warden of the Mad Gate, Captain of the Gravens and apprentice to the Lightning Emperor."

_Click. _The man who'd spoken, unseen and unheard save by one, bowed to the proud figure before it, a grey-eyed, blue-haired waif in worn battle armor.

"Who am I? I am the gambler of the winds, adventurer extraordinaire and practical pilgrim, friend to the Immortal Court, defender of the weak and weary, solace to the lost and keeper of unspeakable secrets."

_Click._

"Who am I? I am the Bane of all that is Bad, hunter of fallen demons, the slayer of the spiteful and the corrupt, Enemy of the Dark, the Deep, and the Outside."

_Click. _The woman looked surprised, eyes wide and body pose tense, as if she'd been shown something big and terrible.

"I am the last runt of the Dragonols, though this revelation I do not pride as much, for upon my word and my life, it's never why I came to you, Princess."

_Click. _She was at once angry, resigned, helpless, relieved.

"…but know that to you, Princess, I am but a humble servant to your great love, I am the one whose heart you hold captive in your divine-like grasp, I am the beast laid down helpless before you. I love you and desire you and covet you, Princess, and as sure as the tides this love will only blossom for you, will burn long and bright like the fiercest star – until the end of eternity itself."

_Click. _There were tears. The man that is not man became a simple man once more, and the woman now wore a blush like a strawberry.

"I am many things, Princess, and I am yours."

And with a final click, Keima Katsuragi leaned back against the bench, flipping his PFP downward against the sun as he stretched. He glanced at a spot behind the solitary tree a few paces to his right, a thoughtful expression crossing his face for a millisecond then, before he relaxed into his seat. Something caught his eye, which made the young man look around the rooftop clearing, seemingly empty of students.

He picked up the unopened can of tea he'd spotted, only to grimace as a foot suddenly came down on his wrist. Keima glanced up into the eyes of a girl wearing the proper uniform of their school.

"Who do you think you are, stealing someone else's drink?" the girl demanded, her arms crossed.

"Who am I?" said Keima, ready to deliver a well-oiled speech. "You know better than anyone, Chihiro. I am the Walkthrough Incarnate-"

"-the self-proclaimed freak of Majima High-" interjected Chihiro, without skipping a beat.

"-the Bold Beacon of Endings-"

"-the biggest otaku in all of Majima – allegedly – "

"-the Ronin of Routes-"

"-the kimono-clad weirdo-"

"-the one-"

"-and only, solitary, lonely-"

"God of Conquests." "Otamegane." Keima looked and felt proud of that first one, while also ignoring the second.

"You forgot to put a 2D somewhere in there," Chihiro pointed out.

"I believe that already goes without saying," said Keima. He found Chihiro's foot still on his wrist. "Seriously, are you giving that to me or not, Chihiro? I can honestly do without tea."

Chihiro didn't respond, eyeing his kimono carefully. "Are those… ferrets? Is that a new one?" Keima knew she was talking about the designs on his kimono.

"Yes, yes, it's a new one," he snapped in exasperation. "Now please let me go." She was putting her weight on his wrist, he realized. He sighed, saying in a low voice. "Please let me go… Chi-chan."

Apparently that particularly phrased plea worked, as Chihiro twitched and eased the pressure of her foot on his wrist. "What? Oh… was this yours? I can never really quite tell. After all, you claim not to drink the… 'commercialized' stuff right? And no one in the school would ever dare buy something for the Otamega. I'd thought maybe it was something someone left behind, carelessly or something."

Keima huffed, freeing himself with a little application of force. He cupped the warm can in his hands. "You're right. I really, _really _wonder how on earth this came to be here." He put the can down – on his side opposite Chihiro. Upon hearing no reaction from the girl, he flipped his game screen back up.

"It's a really nice day isn't it?" said Chihiro. "A pleasant day to be out and about in the grounds, eating and chatting with friends, hanging out, yet here you are nosedeep in a game."

"At least I'm actually outside."

"You're right. Would've been way more appropriate if I was talking to a shut-in."

Keima arched a brow, eyes on the screen. "So what's the problem?"

Chihiro sighed, as if she didn't know how best to reply to her childhood friend. Though the term itself was something the both of them would hotly contest, reducing it to "some guy/real girl I played with ten years ago" (which was not, strictly speaking, accurate)

The girl bit the inside of her cheek, eyes deep in thought. Then she nodded to herself, as if coming to a decision. "Y'know, class rep's been talking about a little get-together this-"

"If this guy's such a savant at reality modification," Keima interrupted, clicking away at his PFP, in a tone that seemed like he was still talking to himself, "-Why is he having so much trouble simply confessing to the love of his life the normal way? A few dates, a kiss or two, a candlelight dinner, plus Ai obviously likes him too, he just can't see it. Why does he have to create a world, create his own demons, his own monsters, his own little demon-lord, his own harem of girls from every nation to fall willingly at his feet, his own rules, heck, even his own rival is a part of his ego he forcibly manufactured. I'd just as easily confess to her, and then create my own personal, everlasting Eden for the two of us, afterward. What do you think, Chihiro?"

"Are you sure _you're _the one most qualified to speak for the characters, Katsuragi? Besides, claiming you'd prefer something in a story go differently doesn't make your version better."

"It kind of is."

"No, it'd just become different. Might even suck more for the 'mere mortals' who don't have your 'god-like' vision."

"It _is _better, because at the very least, Chihiro, foolishness is stripped away and only satisfaction remains!" Keima declared fervently. "Everyone begins and ends with fulfillment in their hearts. Ai wouldn't have had to spend ten years as a starving orphan. Hinano's family would have been spared the revolutionaries' depravities. Megumi would not have languished under the cruelty of the mage-lords. That's the kind of _Real_ filth one wants to escape everyday!"

"…I don't quite get how you're going on about something hollow like that, Katsuragi. They're stories. Like it or not, they exist, they make you happy, said, even… zealously involved like you just—er… well, encouraging the kind of unhealthy, obsessive thinking in people like you." She hesitated, perhaps waiting for a rebound jibe from him, and then continued: "Even if it is what makes you the Otamega."

"My dear Chihiro," a calm Keima said chidingly, seemingly ignoring the second part of her reply. "Don't insult me by referencing your nonexistent _mastery _and _reverence _of all things Literature."

"Well, thanks for bringing it up. I know literature-"

"Please don't tell me you mean those things you and your girlfriends giggle about during breaks." Keima scoffed. "Sausage fests."

"-As I was saying, I know literature and _that_, that right there, that's not literature. At all."

"Maybe not for _your _medieval standards. But tomorrow? This masterpiece," he said, stroking the side of the PFP like it was the spine of a book. "-already has the markings of a small tour de force. It's got a storyline that is almost guaranteed to foment heated discussion of its every line – Socrates could not hope to match the number of inflamed debates in his forum with that which will inevitably arise from this. This little game developed by N-, written and developed by the hand of a fellow god-"

Chihiro threw her hands in the air, bringing them down with an exhausted thump on her lap. "You know, there's a limit to how much _you _I have to put up with every day, Katsuragi, so let me just say, good bye and see you later, not-friend."

Keima went on clicking, unperturbed. "Okay then, not-friend. Have fun~~". Keima let the silence settle long enough for Chihiro to feel as if he'd disappeared into the world he'd so derided. He had started breathing heavily, gaze boring like a drill into the screen, thumb flicking up and down incessantly, his mouth quivering – almost watering like he'd seen something good to eat. Chihiro's nose wrinkled in distaste.

She looked like she wanted to say one last thing, before she shook her head with an air of finality and turned to leave.

Keima followed her exit with one eye, the other half of his gaze still on the screen. It had been a skill he'd developed upon reaching the testosterone-fuelled hallways of high school.

When he heard the distant clang of the rooftop door, Keima turned his full attention back to his PFP, and it become as full a reading session as it had been before he'd stretched. His mouth was now bared in a small snarl, tongue lolling out to lick his lips, tapping the button like a jackhammer. His eyes raced across the screen, lapping up the barest of meanings from each line before he swept it away for the next, putting the scattered fragments together to form a bigger, vague picture.

_A battle… then another… parlay with the redeemed Council of Ages… last confrontation with Lord Rival… siege of the Domed City… yes, yes, betrayal of the first girl, saw that coming a mile away… breaking of the wards… Ai's messiah complex… fall of the Domed City… pursuit of Ai… close now…_

With his other hand, Keima idly played with the circular object attached to his waist, like a belt buckle to the blue band covering the upper part of his hakama. A finger traced one of the ancient scripts engraved along its circumference. A small jade-colored nub was placed at its very center.

_The retrieval… the Flsga's interception… third girl's sacrifice… revelation of the Thousandth Way… ah, here… here it is…_

Keima's eyes were now the closest to the screen than they'd ever been. His breath had literally stopped in that moment.

"_D-don't get any weird ideas… it's not like I just fell in love with you right now or anything- I mean- no! What I'm trying to say is, just because you finally defeated the Flsga doesn't mean I'll magically fall in love with you! Because I've loved you even before that! Oh- oh damn it, damn-"_

The curtains have almost fallen, and Keima was treated to the last picture that needed in this game: the final kiss with Ai.

Keima gave a loud whoop, raising his arms heavenward. There might have been a halleluia there, but what could be heard coming out loudly from his mouth was: "Eight! Eight! Eight-hundred and eight!" which, had a nearby person like Chihiro been there, would've sounded to them like "I ate eight hundred and eight!"

The whole of Keima's body shivered and seized in utter euphoria.

In that moment, he was one high motherfucker.

Eventually he calmed down, enough to see to the process of reading the game's conclusion, the pyrrhic victory, the last farewall to the make-believe world, the breaking down of reality, the epilogue of the two lovers' fateful meeting in another world, in another time much like Keima's own, with the words ~Fin~ written in a flowing script across the image.

Keima took a deep, satisfied breath. He flipped the PFP back down, secreting it into the folds of his kimono.

He took one last look around, ostensibly to ensure he was alone. He glanced at the door Chihiro'd just disappeared to, and then turned his attention towards the tree.

"Hey," he called out. "I've got fifteen minutes and another game to start. Now's a good time for you to show yourself."

Fleshy Cosplays

The Root

There was silence.

He adjusted his glasses. "Fourteen minutes. I'm only giving you this small amount of time to hear you out before I make up my mind and exorcise you later."

He paused, waiting for a reply. "Thirteen minutes. I'd decided, for the past week or so, that I would ignore you and your persistent presence in my favorite spot at school, but there're only so much 'dororororos' I can take every lunch time before it gets tedious."

Keima turned, moving to a more comfortable seating position on the bench. "Oh yes, I know the fact that you arrived here Thursday last week, taking up this specific bench during lunch that I was forced to move to my second favorite spot. I didn't miss that, and I sure as heck noticed you hanging around the school ever since: in the halls, outside the window, but most importantly, _here_ in the God's sanctum, with that obnoxious siren of yours. So, tell me what you are."

He checked his PFP. Twelve minutes. "And yes, I can definitely see you." He squinted at a spot near the trunk. "…Most of you. It's hard not to, since I've been trained to sniff out and banish things like you since I was six." Keima deliberately slurred on the "six", pronouncing it in a hiss.

Keima waited for the entity's response, drumming fingers on the belt buckle. He snorted while his eyes tracked something moving unseen from the tree to a couple of steps in front of him. "Ready to come clean yet? Eleven minutes." He frowned when the thing still didn't respond.

He sighed, rubbing his chin in a semi-thoughtful manner. "Fine. If you won't talk yet, I can definitely rattle off my own opinion of your purpose here. You see, I didn't brand it as coincidence that not soon after that Thursday lunch period, I detected a genuine Grade A Malevolence germinate in this very perimeter. In fact, the idea that it was a mere coincidence didn't enter my mind at all. I know that your presence and that thing are related. So you're responsible in any case - either you're the cause or the effect. Now, will you reveal yourself or shall I be forced to eliminate you too? You've got nine minutes."

Keima's hand snaked into his kimono's inner folds and produced a small slip, like a white ticket stub. He flapped it to and fro. "See this? This is a rank D charm. I rip it and an anti-Malevolence weapon comes out, which will either obliterate you outright, or make you unable to move for a time while I procure a weapon that will. This is what I'm gonna use for that Malevolence, and this is what I'll do to you if you don't talk." He narrowed his eyes. Nothing.

He breathed out a sigh, grabbing Chihiro's gift and standing. "Okay. You've made your intentions clear. I'll just let you know I've brought some of the best gear with me today. You have until tonight to get out otherwise it's a big, fat, explosive sayonara." He turned to leave, clogs clacking on the ground, his inner mind already mapping out the next game to conquer.

And then came a loud, high-pitched sound. "Wait!" There was a rush of air that ruffled his kimono, and he paused a bit dramatically mid-stride to look over his shoulder. He cocked a brow at the sight.

It was a slip of a girl, human in appearance (though his senses didn't trust it was really so), wearing a pink, fluffy raiment over her shoulders and what looked like a witch's broom in her hands. Keima frowned at the skull ornament on her hair, and then blinked at the panicked, desperate expression on the presence's face.

"Please wait, mister student! I don't know how you're able to see me, but I swear I'm not bad! Please hear me out!" All of it was said in fervent exclamation points which made Keima already file away the girl's personality among his mind's catalogue of 2D girl personalities.

…Though as Chihiro kept reminding him, one mustn't judge on first appearances. But his first impression of the girl was that of a real-life magical girl.

"I-I-I-" The girl-thing stuttered, eyes clenched and lips quivering, "I'm-!" She hesitated, and then bowed quickly like a drinking bird. "I'm Elsie de Lute Ima! I'm a junior member of the Runaway Spirit Squad! Pleased to meet you, mister human!"

Almost unbidden, Keima's gaze moved up and down the girl's body as she rose back up to full height, her gaze on him. Then he pinched himself where Elsie couldn't see.

He cleared his throat. "I see. And what are you?" Amazingly, she hadn't answered the question he'd actually demanded.

"I'm a demon from Hell!" she replied cheerfully. Well, there went that magical girl theory. She blinked, face relapsing into worry. "U-Um! Please… hear me out-"

"One moment," Keima said, holding his hand outward and wiggling his fingers. "One moment to process everything." He pointed at her. "So you tell me you're a demon from Hell." Check. He knew the presence had to have been something different, but not to _this _level. It had exceeded his assumptions entirely. Inquiries had to be made – later. "You don't look like a demon."

"Please believe me, I am!" The girl waved her broom to and fro. "Do you want me to play the introduction recording for you?"

"No, that won't be necessary," Keima cut in. He didn't want to spend any more time exploring whatever that was. "To continue, you said you belong to the Runaway Spirit Squad." He cocked his head. "What is that, exactly?"

"It's our duty to patrol the human world and recover runaway spirits!"

He lowered his arm. "You mean the malevolences?"

"Are you familiar with them, mister human?"

"You could say it's part of my job description to exterminate them." He saw her eyes widen slightly.

"Wow!" Was this a trick? Did all demons act this way down there? "I never knew there were humans who could do that, mister human!"

"I'm not-" he started to say, offended somehow by that moniker the girl kept using, but then realized he hadn't formally introduced himself yet. "My pardons," he said, before bowing slightly. "I have many names, but my name I have been given in this mortal coil is Katsuragi Keima of the Katsuragi House. I am more famously known as the Lord of Conquests."

"And do you really exterminate the runaway spirits?" Elsie asked, agog.

"To my family, they are known as the malevolence." He saw a thoughtful glaze on the demon's eyes. "With a capital M if it's really nasty. Sort of like this one."

"Conquests… Lord of… Katsuragi…Keima…"

"Miss Elsie?" The girl-thing looked to be racking her brains for something.

"Ah!" she soon exclaimed, jumping up and pointing straight at him. "You're the Capturing God! Katsuragi Keima of Majima!"

"Why yes, I do hold that title," he acknowledged with a small bow. "Why do you bring this up? Is Hell… acquainted with me?" he asked shrewdly, his mind spinning up a scenario, one of many that had been drilled into him which involved the worst cases in his dealing with the occult.

"The chief said… the chief said that you would be a useful person to us, which was why he was supposed to contact you and request your help." She twiddled her thumbs, pouting glumly. "But not soon after, I was told about your refusal… and so I had to continue on by myself…"

"Refusal? I've never once had any contact with the denizens of whatever plane you hail from. Unless my refusal was in the form of ritual annihilation. If that was so, then I apologize." Still, he was always careful, like with this Elsie, to distinguish the too rotten apples among all the malevolences he had to exterminate.

"Um… chief said you'd been sent a latter… which you declined four times."

Keima ah'd. He remembered. So the "chief" had been the one sending those weird messages.

"So _that's _why it all felt so strange," said Keima, after snapping his fingers. "I'd assumed a malevolence's refuse had infested my PFP or something, the way I had a bad feeling about it." He had then stabbed his precious device straight through the screen with a class C weapon, with deliberate, almost mournful care.

"Um!" She bounded forward with cautious eagerness. "So if you are the Capturing God, then it's very very important now that I ask for your help! Will you please sign a contract with me now?"

He raised a brow. "I'm leery of contracts." Elsie's expression dimmed. "And anyway, what do Hell demons want with _me_ anyway? I'm just a simple being, living a simple life exterminating Earth's own blend of demons."

"Chief said it's because you're the Capturing God! You're known as the conqueror of a thousand hearts right? You can make any girl fall in love with you in the blink of an eye!"

He repressed the urge to preen or look smug because he didn't like where this was all going.

"…And what does making girls fall in love with you have to do with malevolences?"

"Um… do you call the runaway spirit 'malevolences'?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

She yelped, recoiling at his outburst. "Eh… er… well, for us demons the _runaway spirits_ seek the heart, and make their little homes there."

"True, malevolences do forcibly occupy the emotional space of a single organism, preferably human, but sometimes other, safer, lesser organisms are used."

Elsie made a show of nodding, though a bit uncertainly. "Um…then it has to be removed right? And that's the job of demons like us. And to do that we have to make something else live in the heart – something positive and uplifting. Something like love." Keima snorted. "Once the heart is filled with love, the spirit is forced out bam! And we demons have to run around and scoop it up whoosh! so it never harms another human again." Elsie punctuated her explanations with flailing gestures.

He slapped his forehead. "So you want my help because I am said to conjure love like a genie and love is one of the things that makes malevolences pop out," he said rapidly in a summative monotone. He breathed in and out several times in silence afterwards, focusing.

"Um…" Elsie asked. "Mr. Capturing God…?"

"WRONG!" The force of his shout shattered the serenity of the rooftop scene and caused the demon's knees to buckle.

"O-ouch…"

He loomed over the self-proclaimed demon, drawing as much humanly dread as he could summon. "Wrong, on TWO counts, miss demon. One: you don't _need_ love or any sort of good feels to destroy malevolences, and two: I'm not the Capturing God you think I am. I am the lord, the God of Conquering Girls-" He here held out his PFP. "-in games!"

Elsie, eyes wide, hung her head after a few seconds of that sinking in. "O-of games- I-I- That means- So you're not- you can't… help me?"

Keima, who'd brushed imaginary soot of himself after that declaration, said, "With the malevolence? Of course I'll help."

Elsie's face grew radiant. "You mean-"

"Hold it," he threw up another wiggling hand. He pointed with the other towards himself. "Job description remember? I'm gonna be the one to pop a cap in that malevolence's ass once it gets out."

"Gets… out?"

He turned, giving the demon sprawled out on the floor a sidelong glance. "You call them spirits - for us they're malevolence. Spiritual cankers in a person's soul if you will. Well, I like to think of them as blisters. Our methods mainly include letting them fester for a good, long while inside their hosts, until they become nice and big and obvious to me. Then it's easy to just reach in and pop them, conveniently spreading all their filth out for us to safely obliterate."

"You can't do that!" Elsie said, hand over open mouth like she was truly horrified. "That's a bad, bad thing for the human hosts!"

"Why not? That's how I've been doing it."

"B-Because it's dangerous for the hosts! It could terribly, terribly damage them in many many ways! Don't you see it happen?"

"…No they've mostly been fine. There was a salaryman who got himself involved with the yakuza, but it wasn't _that _dangerous. As to the malevolences themselves – without a host to cling to, they are as empty as the air." He saw Elsie stare at him in disbelief. "I'm being perfectly honest here. What do you expect to happen to these hosts? Die horrible deaths?"

"I'm not- I haven't seen it yet-" Elsie bit her lip, "-but chief says the hosts would be affected by something horrible if we allow them to grow. They, and everyone around them will be afflicted by bad, bad things."

Well, he hadn't been paying much attention to his targets' surroundings, but he assumed there hadn't been anything serious. After all, he was quite thorough when it came to clean up. There were no traces of the malevolences after their destruction.

It was more than his free time on the line if he'd screwed up.

"What kind of 'bad, bad things'?"

"I don't… know."

"Oh, right. You haven't seen it yourself." He raised a brow.

"…Sorry."

"And how come I've never seen any demons come in to do their jobs anyway? As far as I know I've been the only one killing the malevolences." Not a total truth, but he _had _sensed no demons before this one. "And doing a, if you don't mind me saying, hell of a good job with it, too."

"That's-" Elsie paused, biting her lip. "N-n-never mind." It seemed the demon saw it was unable to put up a good counter-argument. In that moment, Keima saw she looked so much like a girl lost in the wood. Annoying. That forlorn look might've excited some part of him, but thankfully the knowledge of her true anatomy kept him back. Kept him centered. After all, she was something that felt very much like the malevolences he'd been hunting.

Though the fact that she did induce that feeling him was odd; she was supposed to be a demon from Hell, not little red riding hood. "Are you really not going to help, Mister God? Don't you feel bad for the people with the spirits?"

"I took up this job to kill the spirits of this world, not connect with its 3D citizens. And I definitely don't use love. Eugh." He shook himself. "So now that we've established that, what will you be doing now, demon? Have you got a plan to take care of that malevolence yourself? Because of the circumstances, I would be open to some form of cooperation – to an extent." What he left unsaid was the issue that the self-proclaimed demon had spent uncounted hours since he had sensed it for the first time doing nothing to the malevolence.

He assumed there _was_ a plan.

It was not a plain, ordinary malevolence after all. It was classified "A", a life-changing first for Katsuragi Keima, the hunter.

"I-" He didn't think it was possible for Elsie to droop anymore than she did. "Yes… it's my job…"

There was that look of hopelessness again. He knew some people who got off on this kind of look on girls. If he'd taken a picture of Elsie right now (though he wasn't sure if human technology would be able to capture a self-proclaimed demon), he'd make a fortune in fame passing it around.

Keima took some time to think. Then he shook his head wryly. He glanced down at the demon, who'd still not made to move from where she was.

"You're a pathetic sight." He declared. The demon flinched, and was trying not to look at him. "I just thought I'd let you know. And now that you do, I'd like to invite you to witness my work. I shall begin this afternoon."

"Eh… are you going to…" she trailed off.

"-Destroy the malevolence," he finished for her. He then waved a hand carelessly, as if brushing away cobwebs. "Though I don't particularly care if you do watch or not. Your Hell's had many years to observe, hasn't it?" He turned away, his left hand brandishing his PFP. "I should tell you that this won't be a course of one-upmanship, or a contest. I'm not particularly challenging your Hell, or you, nor do I have something to prove." It would be foolish to challenge something he barely knew about. Particularly if "Hell" was anything like the expected connotation it brought. There was no need to step on any cloven feet, or stir up old fires after all…

"Well then," he concluded, turning to walk away with the air of an emperor going to war, eyes flashing behind his glasses. "If you'll excuse me, I shall now begin preparing for the ritual destruction of the 'A'.

The roof door clanged shut.


	2. Ayumi: trunk

**Disclaimer - Nothing is claimed by the author, except this story.**

* * *

"…What are you doing here?"

The human muttered in a low voice, in a tone that sent jolts down her spine. How had he sensed her?

Oh, right.

"Eh…"

She was standing in the halls of the "school" which the human belonged to. It was also the place where the runaway spirit had been detected, observed and ordered re-sealed by her bosses, assigning the job to her two human weeks ago. But ever since then, she'd made no progress, and had watched helplessly as the thing grew in power. She wanted so much to go home and tell the chief about it, to ask for help, except that she'd made her promise with Hakua that she would be a proper demon from now on, and surely she wouldn't approve of Elsie going back on her word?

In front of her, crouched next to a white-painted pillar, was the human – the Capturing God. The one the chief had promised would help her as her Buddy, which meant things would be off to a good start for the junior member.

But the human had refused. And Hell, with its respect for the ultimate choice, couldn't do anything but let Elsie go on with the mission alone, with special directives and permissions due to the lack of a mortal liaison.

"Once more… what are you doing here?"

Elsie stirred, blinking. "Eh… you can see me?"

"Obviously. I was able to sense you for a long time, remember?"

And then apparently, the God was some sort of magic worker! That, and its familiarity with spirits, was so cool and convenient that she'd first thought they'd _have _to be buddies!

But he'd turned her down, again.

"…Do I have to ask a third time? What are you doing here, Miss Demon?"

"B-but didn't you tell me it was okay for me to watch?"

"I did, and I specified you'd watch me do the deed, not the events and preparation preceding it. I'm giving you the ending – but I don't want you to see the rest of the spoilers. I prefer that you and Hell stand in awe, with more questions than answers."

"Huh?" Elsie could make no heads or heads of what the human had said.

The human sighed, knocking its forehead into the pillar. "It _means_ I don't want you seeing some trade secrets. My methods, my arts. Can you do that for me? Just go away and eat an ice cream or something. Just don't go into downtown – there's a cosplay event going on. You'll probably miss my ritual if you get caught up in there."

"Um… if it's possible… I'd like to stay and watch." Elsie fidgeted with her broom. "Please?"

She saw a flash of the human's eyes; it had turned to look over its shoulder at her.

"I-I- promise I won't get in your way!" she explained frantically, waving her invisible hands. "I'll remain very still and keep very quiet. I won't bother you, honest!"

The human sighed again. Taking its silence as assent, Elsie clenched her fist in victory.

But then a thought occurred to the demon. If the human took care of the demon, did that mean she wouldn't take credit for it? Elsie tilted her head, trying to answer that question herself in her own mind.

The reasoning ran thus.

Spirit sealed equals cured host equals good report equals good job, Elsie.

Yep, that sounded good.

But wait, didn't the human mention 'ritual killing'?

Did that mean the spirit wouldn't be sealed?

"Um…" The human sighed again. "Sorry! Sorry! I just wanted to ask – is it really true you're killing the spirit?"

"…Yes."

"Oh, okay." She tilted her head quizzically. "And what happens-" Another sigh. "-sorry! Sorry! And what happens to the spirit after it's 'killed'?"

"I don't know." The human twitched its shoulders up. "If there's a heaven – or hell – for malevolences, then that's where they go. If it's complete oblivion for them, then that's that. If they burst into tiny infinitesimal evil-atoms then that's a fine idea too."

"Oblivion," she repeated. Her head drooped. "Oblivion's bad." The silence resumed.

"…So-"

"GRAAAGHHH!"

Elsie yelped, jumping up and clutching her broom tighter to herself. She started mouthing apologies and bows as quick as she could. The human had risen, turning to where she was with a cold, fearsome expression on its face.

"Let. Me. Make this. Veeery clear. I have a job to do. I have preparations to make, to do that job. I won't be helped with doing said preparations, if some demon is sitting constantly on my shoulder asking questions of me. Now, this demon-paint glyph isn't _nearly _done, and I'd appreciate it if I could get some silence to finish this so I can get to the other _fifteen _things I have to set up before the start of next period. Now, you can go on outside and do whatever you want before the ritual (and I'd much appreciate that) or you can stay here, stand and watch but for the love of all things beautiful and perverse, keep your words to yourself! I am _this _close to trying out my anti-malevolence on Hell demons. _This _close!" After that, the human huffed once and returned to whatever he was doing.

Elsie stood with head bowed, fighting the tears. Then, raising her head, a blaze in her eye, she strode over to the human, leaned in close to his ear and shouted.

"I HATE YOU, GOD!"

She then fled, away from the curses and the flailing, following her echoes out the school and to the outside.

She returned, remembering her duty, exactly five minutes after.

Fleshy Cosplays

Trunk

_Troublesome._

In that moment, Keima referred to four things.

First, the flag requirements to _Hellwalker: Tales of the Nine_ were obscene and blatantly useless. Repeating new games just for a single changed line in the middle of a route and the need to complete said route to collect the needed flag was a circle of Hell Keima would only wish on his worst enemies.

Speaking of Hell, that lead to his next grievance. Second, the demon girl from Hell, who hovered behind him like a human-sized, invisible bee. Unfortunately at that moment, he could not muster an appropriate response to that thing, especially since it was being very quiet. There were a lot of factors, and Keima struggled to admit to himself that one involved the demon's appearance.

Third, the malevolence. Not the malevolence by itself, but its host. This fact was something he'd found troublesome since he'd first detected the thing, but only now did he acknowledge the apparent difficulty involved with having someone… close by as an indirect target.

Ayumi Takahara was a classmate and was also a friend of his not-friend, Chihiro. He didn't know, and didn't bother to learn, the details behind that friendship, but that alone was enough to make him tiptoe around his duty this time around instead of going in full skip speed.

Fourth and most relevant in this very moment, was the person standing before him. It was the only other student in this school allowed to be out and about in the halls even during class. Like him, she had the necessary academic credentials to put forth a good public reason for the frequent "compulsory" truancy.

"I hope this day finds you well, lady," Keima greeted, bowing. He skillfully evaded the piercing glare sent his way by turning to look at the nearest window. "Today is indeed a fine day – for many things and many deeds."

"Words are pretty," replied Kusunoki Kasuga icily, "but ultimately shallow without proper action." Unlike him, the heiress of the Kasuga Family was dressed in the school uniform, although she had been given special permission like him to wear the clothes of tradition.

"You will of course adhere to the agreement?" Keima asked, still smiling placidly at something outside.

There was never any real competition between the two demon-hunter houses of Majima. They held distinct power in the city - a privilege since the time of the dragon emperors, and so relations between the two were relatively cordial and stable (that had been recorded in text at least). They were expected to cooperate in their duties more than anything, for the threat of evil was very real, and their ancestors understood that needless strife led only to ruin and confusion.

But a rivalry there was, unspoken, unrecorded, and nursed by each side throughout the centuries. Either a Kasuga or a Katsuragi, or both, would have too much choleric blood in them and so declare a rivalry with the other family to themselves, leading to many explosive, contrived situations and fervent killings of the malicious occult with the sole, single-minded purpose of one-upping the other. One had even lead to a surprise marriage involving two scions (later disinherited) with a stormy relationship which modern otaku would have described as a "mutual _tsundere_-ing situation".

"As I must, Katsuragi," the girl replied, though words to the contrary threatened to burst out from her firm mouth. "And as always I pray that you will succeed."

In this generation, the Kasuga designee inherited the burning desire behind a façade of stoic calm. For whatever reason only she was aware of, Keima was now her demon hunter rival. Most times, Keima found it downright bothersome.

Such times included this very Class A malevolence, though he understood well why Kasuga wanted this to be her kill. It would be their literal firsts, in a way, and how it would be successfully destroyed would be a mark that Keima guessed would linger in the girl's perception for a lifetime.

Kasuga had wanted, _fought _for the "honor" of having the kill. She'd stormed into the Katsuragi compound, she'd cornered him in inconvenient times at school, and she'd stalked him throughout a play-through of _Pricolle~_ while he was patrolling the city_. _It was annoying to feel an indignant gaze burn a hole in his head while guiding hopeful maidens to enlightenment.

He didn't really care about it, in a way. As God, he disliked being distracted by the mundane.

But rules were rules. As much as he disliked having to deal with Takahara, he could not easily disobey the edict of the Katsuragi.

This 3D world is too troublesome, he'd thought.

Keima turned his gaze from the window to meet Kasuga's. "Thanks for the kind words, lady. No doubt they shall be instrumental in chaining that thing."

Kasuga's eyes flashed. Restraint and anger warred in her expression. "Have a care, Katsuragi – and I don't say this lightly." She took one step forward, a jagged edge in her voice. "It feels strong, stronger than it was at the start, at least. Ensure you are well-prepared. I would not want to lose a worthy… and able fellow hunter." He knew she had intended to say "rival", but she seemed to be cultured enough to remember her clan's stance.

"Lady, your heartfelt concern is sweet, sweet nectar to me. I shall not disappoint." Making a final bow, Keima walked past Kasuga, who stood as a seething statue and watched him go.

His slow, clacking footsteps echoed deliberately through the corridor. Keima didn't look back until he was near the corner, where he could stop and glance at the staircase without looking suspicious.

The PFP's reflective surface brought to him the image of Kasuga, who'd turned to glare after him with her arms crossed, and the faint emanation, like a shimmering heat haze to him, of the devil floating an inch above her head.

Grunting in satisfaction, he turned his machine on.

Interesting.

There were as many ways of eliminating malevolences as there were of preparing food. In both cases, something ended up being served.

Keima's personal favorite was the no-nonsense anti-malevolence weaponry. Numerous games proved it, the sometime successful police and local defense forces made effective use of it: nothing declared annihilation more than a rifle that shot conceptuals, each with the force of a speeding bus, twelve times per five seconds. (Conceptuals ranged from solid-packed purification salts to silver)

But as he couldn't just show up in front of Takahara bearing that kind of weaponry (at least, not without the risk of starting up a wildfire of rumors—no Katsuragi art existed that modified memory), Keima had to resort to a way he loathed doing – taking the longer, meandering approach. They involved the type of esoteric applications that the Kasuga and clans from other cities preferred.

Keima's eyes glanced from the paper to the image on his PFP. It had been repurposed for now into an imager, showing him pictures of the proper glyphs he had to copy. Each detail had to be inscribed accurately and precisely with the right materials and then positioned carefully in their place. Each glyph was a separate, individual task as he'd told the demon, and each had their combined purpose of forming a pattern of energies, known only to him, around the school.

That, and a couple of other preparations he'd made throughout the afternoon (including securing Kasuga's reluctant aid in some small matter) would lead to a straightforward, at least more or less normal, ending. It was the kind he preferred.

As he laid the finishing touches, the bell signaled the end of the last period. Keima stood to full height, switching the imager to his last saved game. The special ink he'd used had yet to dry, and made him look as if he'd dipped his hands in a tub of agitated octopi, but it didn't matter in the slightest.

In a short while, the usual after-school buzz and bustle would sweep through the school. He returned to the vicinity of the classroom and then sensed the demon's presence hovering nervously nearby.

He paid it no mind. Not now.

Keima heard a small, soft gasp come from behind him as he produced a palm-sized paper airplane that flew of its own volition. It carried a small camera near its nose which fed images directly to his PFP.

He glanced towards the source. He could almost feel the curiosity emanating like heat from the demon. Clucking his tongue, he turned his attention to the screen.

The students came rushing by, in singles and in threes and in droves, and each made sure to give the kimono-clad, ink-stained person leaning against a classroom wall in the middle of the corridor with his eyes on a PFP a wide berth. It wasn't only because he was of the Katsuragi – as Chihiro had claimed, he had long acquired reputation as an acidic, anti-social _otamegane. _Which was not an untrue supposition, as long as one added the additional eminent title of "God".

Keima pushed back from the wall, now moving into position, and the demon followed.

"_Where is that guy?" _asked Takahara. He could barely hear the people in the video his paper spy brought back, but he fancied himself something of a lip-reader. (It wasn't hard, from context and the slight understanding of each of his classmates to make an educated guess) "_He didn't show up all afternoon!"_

"_And this comes as a surprise why?" _asked his not-friend this time. He saw her grainy image shuffle against his chair and heard a distinct _thump _of knocking against wood. "_Anyway, why do you- oh. Oh yeah, I remember now._"

Today's cleaning duties had fallen to Takahara and himself. He hadn't specifically planned it in advance and it was one of those rare occurrences of serendipity that greatly benefited him.

"_Well, last I saw him, he was in the rooftop. Doing god knows-"_

"_And that was… lunchtime? Gosh! Someone's brains could get fried up there-" _Another unknown voice, most likely one of their other friends.

"_I think someone's already did-" _said another unknown with a laugh.

There was another, stronger thump. "_I don't believe it! So am I the only one on cleaning duty today?"_

"_Looks like it-"_

"_Don't worry, we'll save you a spot-"_

"_Arrgh! I hate you so much guys. So much-"_

He stopped at the approximate center of the school building, a spot on the small, inner park filled with stout stone benches, shrubs, bushes and trees. A glyph had been placed here, and was a central portion of the grand pattern. The reason why he'd chosen this place to initiate operations was because it was a spot that could not fail to be seen by any students passing through to the exit.

He checked the PFP again. The friends had left Ayumi to her fate. He was about to estimate the time when a flicker caught his eye.

The demon had reappeared, and was now slurping on a popsicle, her purple-tinged tongue lapping the treat up with delighted haste.

When she noticed his bewildered glance, the demon flushed, giggling nervously before approaching him.

"Stop," he hissed, shooing her with his hands. "Please hide. I'm about to start a sensitive part of the operation."

"Oh, sorry!" said Elsie in an overly loud whisper. The image of the ice cream eating demon faded like a mirage, and Keima fought the instinct now to dwell on that… delectable image of licking.

Cute yes! But no, no NO! Not my business!, he thought furiously.

Shuddering, he turned back to his PFP, and now spied his not-friend's face peeking at him from a window above. She looked smug, and was dialing something enthusiastically on her cellphone. He blinked and shrugged, giving off the air of someone fervently concentrating on his PFP.

There was the distant sound of a bell, and Keima recognized it as Kasuga's part. In order that no teachers or students be witnesses to Keima and Takahara being together, she had ordered an impromptu display of traditional dance by some of her clan's retainers, of which the principal had been informed and subsequently made to order all faculty attend. The faint, faraway strains of taikos and flutes signaled the start of the performance.

It was an improbable development, the sudden appearance of which should have excited some suspicion in the perceptive. At least, if Keima hadn't been the writer of this scenario he would've been, following the Real's event probability matrix.

Then again, Keima thought, there was that demon to consider…

Later!He refocused on the troublesome game. Damn! Why is there an endearing devil character in this half-assed game!

He was thankfully jolted from his inner distractions by the heavy sounds of rapid footsteps. Keima cleared his throat, shooting a significant glance towards the devil's position that he hoped the other would get.

Still, he didn't think Takahara could have arrived so fast, he thought, as he traced the intricate carving on his waist. Their classroom was the floor near the very top, and was situated along the outer part of the building whose windows overlooked the sports fields. Even with a running pace, it would have taken two-

"There you are otamega!" said his grinning classmate, who didn't look the least bit winded. "You weren't planning on ditching me with all the work, were you?" She held out the one broom she'd brought.

Of course, he thought, catching her intent.

Keima took the time to give the girl a once-over which to her would have taken only one second of him looking at her over the rim of his glasses. Slender figure, runner's legs, relatively attractive face, an easy smile – and not a single indication of malevolence influence. Well, aside from the massive undercurrent of negative supernatural energy lurking beneath the surface, just barely hidden from the sun of his gaze by a flimsy canopy. But Takahara seemed to be as any of his other targets, intact and oblivious to the thing inside, unlike what the demon had claimed.

"Did you know Kasuga-senpai's got something going on outside?" she said, in a way which Keima recognized was conversing purely for the sake of pleasantries. "You should totally come see! I mean- if you can spare the time after this-"

"Takahara," he interjected crisply. "Why are you giving me that broom?"

"Huh? Don't you remember we're on cleaning duty today?"

"I do recall that fact; but I do not know how it relates to this scene of you handing me the only broom you've got." Takahara's eyes widened. He flicked imaginary dust from his finger and took one step toward his classmate. He tilted his head. "And since I don't see any other cleaning instrument in sight, I would assume you're either done with your duty in the five minutes since the last bell rang (which is a remarkable, albeit superhuman feat), or you think you'll perform much better without carrying a broom around, or it's some other undisclosed reason you're gonna explain to me now…?"

Ayumi crossed her arms over her chest, all the cheer seemingly stripped from her expression. "You know, Katsuragi, at the moment, I'm very busy with club-" she began.

"That still would not excuse you, Takahara," he said with some asperity, taking on a confrontational stance. "A duty's a duty, whether it's cleaning or our studies."

He thought to put all the authority his clan name could give him in his demeanor. No person who'd lived in Majima long dared to defy one of the Katsuragi, be they seasoned yakuza or fresh-faced beat cop.

(Though, he disliked using this vain tactic. There were lots of other ways to win a confrontation rather than throwing one's family name around like a haughty Kasuga.)

His classmate, who looked slightly intimidated, glowered. "Oh yeah? Then what about you, mister responsible? What gives you the right to brush off class like that? Rather, _you're _the one I found out here, playing your stupid games and so obviously avoiding your 'duty'!"

"I have my reasons-"

"And I've got mine! And unlike whatever you have, it's really important!" The girl had raised her voice, which caused even Keima to quirk an eye.

She'd gotten a tad riled up. That was a bad sign. He didn't know (and didn't want to know) what had gotten her emotional like this. He also didn't want to have a loud shouting match that would bring curious onlookers to this position.

And so Keima made a face that looked a tad guilty, shifting his feet in a show of discomfort before shrugging and turning the screen of his PFP down. "Pitting two truants together like this was a mistake from the start." He made a sigh, and then tilted his head as if deciding. "Let's compromise then. I _will_ take the broom operations. You take care of arranging stuff. And picking up the stray litter. Things like that, now that I mention it," he nodded towards something behind Takahara in the distance, where an empty can lay on the ground.

He had the not-friend to thank for that.

Takahara made an impatient, exasperated sound. Eyes blazing, she glared openly at him now, as if he could be seared from her gaze alone, before relenting and shrugging her shoulders. Rolling her eyes, she placed the broom down and turned around to sort out the litter.

The very second she did that, Keima moved right into action.

The small switchblade, custom-embedded into each of his PFPs snapped into position as Keima made a quick cut into his palm. He wasted no time in pressing his bloodied palm onto the slip of paper right next to him.

The glyph activated with a faint, purplish glow followed by the sound of the soft tinkling of breaking glass. The sudden sight and sound should have alerted Takahara, but the girl had stopped in mid-walk, her back still turned to him.

Keima closed his eyes briefly, feeling the distinct, claustrophobic feeling of being pulled from the world, his whole being suffused with illogicality and unnaturalness to sever his physical ties with reality. It was not unlike entering into a spirit trance, although that one's purpose was only banishing a spirit from the physical and not one's whole existence, as was now happening to him.

He opened his eyes to a world bleached of light and colors, as if the sun had been swallowed by something large and unnatural. Keima could hear nothing but the ringing in his ears, for nothing else existed to make a sound here. The only, temporary source of light was the body of Takahara in front of him, which was now surrounded by brightly glowing purple chains, a multitude winding its way around and about the girl and the park, some embedding themselves into the walls and the pillars and the windows, some extending upward to disappear into the coal-choked sky. Something glowed brighter than the chains, situated in her chest area, and it was that which Keima now scrutinized. The girl herself was a monochrome color, unmoving and unaware of Keima (or anything at all).

The light was certainly something new. He supposed that was linked to the malevolence's distinct category.

There was a small gasp, and Keima whirled to see the demon materialize over where she'd last disappeared. She appeared unchanged save her relative lack of colors and wore a look of abject wonder and awe at her surroundings.

"How- How did you do this, mister God? This is like… this is like magic!"

"What—rather- _How_ did you get in here?" Keima demanded. It was a real inquiry – he really wanted to know how the demon came to be here.

"I don't know… one moment I saw you disappear into that weird light, the next I appeared right here! I didn't do anything, I swear!" She caught sight of Takahara and the chains. "Is that- what is that, mister God?"

There were certain special permissions he'd specifically made into each glyph he'd inked. Only those who made a blood pact, which he'd done with the central glyph, could enter and trigger the void trap. The array of glyphs essentially dragged the user into a small, pocket dimension for a period of real-time, and in here he wouldn't be disturbed nor witnessed doing his extraction operation on the malevolence. Initiating it himself ensured he was the master of the trap, and could banish or drag other beings inside.

He had certainly not invited the demon in, he'd insisted to the being, after he'd explained all that to it.

"But I thought you wanted me to see, mister God," she said reproachfully.

"The ending, as I've said- not the route itself. But I suppose it's too late and too irrelevant to get worked up about it now." Keima adjusted his glasses. It would be too troublesome to attempt forcing the demon outside now, since he had nothing to go on about "Hell" beings. He thus pointed imperiously at the demon, saying in a commanding tone. "_You_ will not interfere."

"Alright!"

"You will not breathe a word of what you see here to anyone else." He couldn't and wouldn't hold her to that for now.

"I understand!" She saluted, though Keima couldn't tell in the darkness if it was real or mocking.

"I need you to swear."

"I swear on the pride of the Hellian!"

"The what?"

"Sorry," it had the nerve to stick its tongue out playfully in a sickening-sweet manner. "It's just something my friend always says-"

"Never mind," he interrupted. Remember your oath, Katsuragi!"I hope you Hell demons are true to your word." He still couldn't (and wouldn't) hold her to that.

"Oh we are! Elsie can guarantee that!" Keima grunted, pushing the final distraction aside as he withdrew several tools from the slips of paper inside his kimono. Methodically, he laid them out on the ground around Takehara: a metallic talon, a scalpel-shaped blade the size of his forearm, several vials of differently-colored liquid, a box filled with curios, and another box stuffed to overflowing with pieces of paper.

Keima set the PFP on standby and got to work.

He sprinkled some liquid from a vial onto his hands.

He held a dragonfly figurine in his mouth.

He planted the talon on the ground, which turned into a crane-shaped thing that grasped the light in Takahara's chest tightly.

He unfolded a long, winding strip of paper and wound it about the handle of the blade.

He brandished it now, and it was either the trick of the light or the world's fancy that it seemed bigger than before, its blade the size of a king-sized bed, which he hefted as if it weighed nothing.

"Um…" Keima breathed out, resisting the urge to turn and threaten the demon with the blade.

"…What?"

"…Will you be… using that on the spirit?"

Keima shrugged, deciding to humor the demon for now. "To make it brief, _I _won't be doing the cutting, this one is." So saying, he turned the titanic scalpel horizontally across his chest and pushed forward, stabbing the point of the blade into Takahara's chest. The light suddenly sizzled, as if it were brimming with electricity. Almost immediately, numerous black ribbons erupted from it, streaming outward in all directions. The chains shook, as if something were silently struggling in its bonds.

He let go of the vibrating handle, and the blade was left sticking into the girl while the sharp sound continued in frequency and volume. After checking to see nothing was out of place, Keima then stood back and produced his PFP in his hands.

He glanced toward the devil, who seemed absorbed with the activity in front of her.

"If it's not apparent, I'm basically giving that thing a slow, painful death," Keima explained. The PFP screen flashed light and color and sound onto the bleak world. "Even if I'd rather prefer the quicker route; in this case, this elaborate setup is necessary due to the nature of the… target."

"Um…"

The game was seriously giving him aneurysms left and right. He'd come across a bug, a _damnable bug_! right in the middle of the repeat routes. He couldn't reproduce it, which was doubly frustrating since he needed to make a good case to present in flaming prose to the company's review site. "It's going to take a while to do. Ten, fifteen minutes, almost as long as this dimension will last—though I hope it doesn't last that long. I still have to make sure that everything's been flushed from the host."

"Um!-"

He'd had to avoid saving to see if that triggered the bug – and it made the game doubly infuriating to conquer. "If you're wondering about how you came here, you'll find no answers from me. I certainly didn't intend for any other to come here aside from the target."

"M-mister God…"

"We shall have to talk about this later, if that's alright with you. I mean, I had an inkling your kind existed, since if dragons and beasts from faerie are truth even as humanity calls them fantasies, then who am I to discount the Underworld? The question then is, is it the 'underworld' per se, or another sort of Hell…"

"Mister God! Please-!"

There was now an insistent beeping sound coming from behind, and it was so familiar that he could've placed it if he had a mind to it. But- "Please don't disturb me, miss demon. I'm in the midst of a delicate operation." He referred to both the extraction and his bug troubleshooting. "Please stand over there and wait-"

"Look out!"

The demon's scream rang so close and so loud that he cursed, looking up to verbally pummel the demon again. The moment he did so, he noticed the sight of the target for one second before there was a loud explosion; and at the same time, he felt himself yanked backward strongly by something on his neck, and that was an altogether painful experience were it not for him landing on something warm and soft.

"What in-" He blinked, in that next instant, something whizzed past his sight, something crackling and loud and hot. Then it was as if the whole pocket dimension was filled with the sound of live, untamed electricity, and Keima finally took the initiative of sitting up from whatever it was he'd been lying on.

And he promptly crushed the figurine in his mouth, wounding his gums and his tongue but having the effect of throwing up an invisible barrier against the burst of energy that headed his way.

"-the fwaying fook-" He tumbled away, and something behind him yelped and he paid it no mind as he scrambled for the box of curios, his gaze disbelieving at the chains that lay broken all around the visible world, at the shattered remnants of the talon and the blade, and on the mobile figure of one Ayumi Takahara, light spilling from every orifice on her face and the glow on her chest now replaced by a white-and-black miasma of ribbon-like strands and smoke.

"-is this!?" As if in response, the _thing _that was supposed to be his target flared in brightness, and it was all he could do to dodge its charge; he smelled something burning and realized that had been part of his kimono that had been singed in that instant.

He quickly turned around, now seeing the demon stumble to its feet, eyes on the thing that had barreled past the two, which was now crouched on the other end radiating the foul energy.

It was then that Keima noticed.

The demon was frantic, jabbing a finger at the Takahara-thing. "Mister God! This is serious! This is what I was talking about!"

He couldn't believe he'd missed it. Then again, it had only been twenty seconds since "all hell" had broken loose.

"Mister God?"

He looked at the two pieces of the PFP he held in his hands, piecemeal hanging off the severed parts of its frame. The two halves of Yokkyun's printed face smiled lovingly at him from each side of the electronic rift. He stared blankly at it, and he gulped several times, hands trembling, mouth dry. Then he gritted his teeth, and it was as if a wave of white-hot rage had burst from his mind, setting his entire body on fire.

"Godfuckingdamnit!" he shouted, glaring past the puzzled demon at his _enemy. _

"I hadn't fucking saved that yet!"


	3. Ayumi: branch

**Disclaimer - Nothing is claimed by the author, except this story.**

* * *

"…She has not reported to me for some time."

A breath. The floorboard of the old school building creaked.

"…like she was bothered by something, which she did not share…"

Someone coughed. The old, familiar dust hung heavy like a cloak over everyone's shoulders.

"…if Takahara doesn't have a good excuse? You already know the answer to that…"

A grim pause. A long, loud noise, like a chorus of heartbeats, echoed in the distance. It was muted by the aged windows.

"…Continue to keep an eye out. Be very wary of the Kasuga. Leave the Katsuragi to me. Very well. You have your orders."

The telephone bleeped once, then shut down.

A breath, and then silence.

Fleshy Cosplays

Branch

The Katsuragi teachings didn't just account for all types of encountered and hypothetical malevolences. They also detailed other magical beings, some living firmly in the incredulous' minds as mere fantasy, others emerging in response to the former group. Most of them were humans acquiring some fantastical trait or superpower, with all the others being evolutionary runoffs ranging the gamut of abstract energy spaces to nanite-plated, microscopic universes.

They all shared one thing in common: they were Secrets, known only to the Katsuragi and anyone else whose job it was to keep track of them.

As of this moment, Keima had more than a half-certainty that the Takahara girl was some sort of secret-superhuman. She just had to be.

The Takahara-thing growled, its voice like flowing gravel. Keima bared his teeth in abject rage.

"Oh, you're in for it now, you fucking mal-soaked bitch! That was a vintage-colored special Yokkyun 4th anniversary edition, fifth generation PFP you just killed, and I'd need the devil's own luck to find- whoa!-" The energy-ridden shape in black-and-white somersaulted onto the wall of the building, leaving a wave of invisible static in its wake that made the hairs on his right arm rise (not of fear, naturally). It stuck its feet and crouched against the wall like a wingless, electrified fly.

Her unknown heritage certainly explained all the electrical energy she was discharging like a blown-out transformer, and the sight of it defying the laws of physics (which were still mirrored in this pocket world).

"Mister God!" Again being dragged away, Keima saw the demon's pink bubblegum clothing wrap around his waist with the strength of a wrestler. Several energy attacks exploded the floor around his former position.

"Oof!" The demon's petite form was bowled over by the force of the collision.

Keima cursed, shaking himself free of the demon. He hurled two class D weapons, small, whirling javelins that homed in on whatever their master was aiming at.

Takahara skidded left along the wall at the last second, the weapons impacting against the wall in an explosion of glass and concrete.

It explained _those _high (albeit malevolence-affected) speeds that would've broken track records all over Majima.

Upon unflatteringly quick self-reflection, Keima surmised the cause of the latter could've also caused the former.

Keima paused then, more than slightly appalled upon realizing he'd used class D weapons on a human. That was a no-no. Now he had to think of a-

Like a big volleyball of electrifying doom, Takahara's form bounced upward through the air towards the two. It illuminated the world like a tiny, flashing, dying star and crashed into the ground with the force of a wrecking ball.

"When the hell did this turn into a superpowered fight for my life!? Where was the setup? Huh!?" He dove sideward and tumbled as far as his adrenaline could bring him. He wasn't some entity in his games gifted with preternatural skills! He couldn't just go toe to toe with a dangerous in an action-packed scene. This was the unfortunate Real, where he was a simple exterminator at most! He didn't have Kasuga's vaunted warrior spirit! He didn't have the blood of the Nanayas, the technologies of the Great Uras, or the arts of the Mitos (all fictional, exaggerated depictions of Real demon hunters)! He didn't even have the luxury of a secondary character to cover for him—aside from the devil, but it had already proven it couldn't help.

Keima wheezed, throwing out a hand to stop from slamming against the treetrunk and clutching a hand to his heaving chest. He pushed his glasses back, now greasy with sweat.

He couldn't just disengage the trap. That would mean revealing a Secret to the world, which was Bad. There were worse consequences at stake if that ever happened than merely suffering through Kasuga's victorious smirk. (not that she would smirk in that worst-case scenario)

Overall conclusion: his objective hadn't changed. In order to survive, he had to kill the malevolence that he should've already killed by now in a fight he wasn't prepared for – having left all his loud, heavy-hitting weapons back home like a nervous, wide-eyed, buck-toothed newbie. And he had to do so before his body's crappy stamina petered out like a shallow stream, possibly making him pass out and disengage the trap and letting monster-Takahara loose on the entire student body.

"Mister God!"

"Demon! Elsie! Can't you do anything to that thing? Anything at all?" He hated sounding as desperate as the demon had been when he'd dismissed her earlier that lunch. He glared briefly at the loud, beeping skull on its head.

"Awawah! I'm not sure if I can, Mister God!" In the heat of it all, it was easy to conserve energy by not yelling at the demon. "I could end up hurting the target! We're not supposed to do that!"

Takahara tumbled at them again, preceded by a sound like an electric-razor. Cursing inwardly, Keima spat out the last pieces of the dragonfly figurine still in his mouth; and then swallowed, with some difficulty, an entire vial of red liquid. His senses sharpened in that moment, his eyesight becoming blurry from the glasses which he took off, his muscles taking on a pleasant buzzing throbbing, bones popping, awareness shifting. The eternal midnight world was now revealed to him, expanding into a school shaded by twilight hues.

Keima swallowed, hauling the demon by the scruff of its clothes and springing backward, before leaping straight up with legs powered like a frog's. He heard a surprised grunt: the two had disappeared too abruptly into the dark, and now he was fairly certain the thing couldn't peer through the darkened world.

The sound of shattering glass further told him this had only bought him some moments of succor while the Takahara-thing proceeded to troll through the corridors below looking for them.

"Turn that off!" he whispered, snatching the skull-siren on the demon's head, which had now ceased bleeping but was still blinking a steady light. The demon yelped, and irked him even more by suddenly grabbing onto the front of his kimono with shivering hands. "I need a plan. One that doesn't involve a fight to the death since a. the enemy's a malevolence-possessed human and b., I don't have the right tools for it." And the right training, he thought. "Because you're here, I was hoping you might have an idea, demon."

In the darkness, Keima's enhanced eyesight saw the demon's nervous expression. "L-like I said, i-it would be dangerous, Mister God. Demons aren't supposed to attack humans. And I don't really- don't know a lot of magics for that too. I'm-I'm just a junior member…"

"Then what use are you?" he snapped, and the demon flinched. He brushed aside the demon's hands, turning around to think in the gloom. Downstairs, there was a noisome crashing as the malevolence tore the world apart.

Keima's jerked, having felt the demon's hands now clutching the hem of his hakama. "M-m-maybe if we tried…"

"Tried?"

Something pink traced itself into the air beside him, formed in the shape of a heart. "L-Love…"

"How the hell is that gonna help in this situation, huh? Are you trying to put one over me?" Damn it all, he'd nearly shouted. But he felt it was justified, seeing the sheer, annoying idiocy behind him.

Elsie squawked, and for some reason gripped the fabric even stronger. "Y-Y-Yes! That's the surefire way I know to- to evacuate the runaway spirit!"

"How the hell am I supposed to do that in this situation? I ask you, demon. HOW? Takahara's gone full berserk! Even if I could apply myself to the Real as lord of conquests, there's no reasoning with forces of destruction like that! Even with a prior affection flag - which I don't have - the chance of sanity recall is too low-" He groaned in frustration. Once again, he reminded himself, love could not hunt malevolences for him. Once again, he shook himself free from the demon's grasp. He placed a hand on his forehead, trying to find the right thoughts to think. PFP gone, half his tools shredded, he'd left the trinket-box behind in his flight (should've brought it and left the demon), and he was out of body enhancing tonic.

And, by the very near sounds of the screeching masonry below, he was also out of time.

He ran forward through the dark, leaving the demon behind. His hands were now busy unwrapping some of the tools left to him: a longer javelin tipped in a thunderbolt-shaped wedge marked with the bold characters of _conviction_, a small red jingling pouch, a carved figurine in the shape of a tentacled thing and a reusable net-launcher.

Keima set to work, trudging through the world's darkness with desperate, deliberate, dogged efforts.

And not a moment too soon: the malevolence had taken the direct route and smashed right through the last floor as he was about to finish. Keima didn't want to explore how it was able to do so with Ayumi's body. The sinister, crackling light flashed into the corridor, with bolts of black-white energy bouncing off the ceiling and walls.

The malevolence's head swiveled left and right, peering into the dark like a predatory reptile. Keima stood a long ways down the corridor now, hand gripping the weapon tightly.

His right eye twitched wildly for a few seconds. His sharpened eyesight was fading.

Takahara-thing shrieked an unearthly sound that would have scared even the Devil from hell. And judging by that cry that had come from behind, it had frightened one particular demon as well.

Keima watched the thing make a direct bee-line for him, if its action could even be rightly called that: tearing up the floor, shattering the windows with a frenzied display of light, and causing a faint breeze through the hall as it torpedoed forward.

Halfway of a second to its destination (covering almost twenty meters of hallway), the thing tripped.

It crashed and skidded, sending sparks flying everywhere. The sight of a spread-eagled Takahara swimming on the floor's surface would be almost comical, but the joke would be on Keima, if he became distracted by that. As it was, his eyes tracked the thing's progression, and its inertia slowed down enough for it to trigger the next trap.

A net, much like the human gladiators would have used, engulfed the fallen host. It was, of course, no ordinary net, easily broken by things that could go mach speeds. It was anti-malevolence, Class C, too low for a being such as this, but hopefully enough for his purpose—

Keima had never taken any archery lessons, much less courses on a technique that had been nurtured since before man domesticated his fellow beast. But he fancied himself as someone with good aim as far as his body would permit, having had high scores in accuracy in some of his games that demanded it.

He reared back, holding the humming javelin aloft and then launched it forward. The jagged-tipped missile sailed straight yet not-so-true, but still somehow reached the target: the tip blasting into the blazing white core with the noise of a thunder crash.

Keima hunched, scrutinizing his work. The thing howled and wailed as it thrashed about. Deciding that it still wasn't enough, Keima dashed forward, unveiling three smaller javelins the size of his forearm. He thrust them one by one against the cracking core, and the thing's screams only heightened from that. Keima didn't mind that it sounded as if he were torturing Ayumi herself: as far as he was concerned, she was now a mere target. To wrap up the ritual, he took a pinch of the dust inside the pouch and sprinkled it onto the trapped target.

He let out a breath, stooping to catch his breath. The blue world was now turning back to dark in his eyes. Keima now focused on the extraction process: there would be no mistakes this time.

"U-Um…"

"Be silent, demon," he hissed. "I didn't want distractions before and I certainly don't want them now."

"B-but I have to do my part, yes?" she said, and he almost cursed, feeling her presence so close. He heard a shuffling, but didn't dare look back. "I-I- _ahem-_ I know a spell that will bind her tighter than that, Mister God."

He saw the broom glowing with some strange energy from the corner of his eyes. He didn't know why he was now too slow on the uptake, and was almost halfway through saying, "What are you doing-?" before his world erupted in white.

There was a scream, followed by ripping fabric and falling debris. He felt his body crash into something hard and painful, but he couldn't feel any of that, since his nerves were still inured somewhat to pain.

The squid figurine was already in his hand by the time he felt himself being lifted up. A blast of cold assaulted his face, a cold so fierce it burned and sizzled. His vision cleared enough to see his assailant.

He could no longer make heads or tails of the host. It was as if a twisted mask had covered Ayumi's face, her entire body a horrid mass of dark-and-white wisps held together to form a face that held no discernable shape. "_Staaaay… staaay away!"_

It speaks, Keima thought, before he felt a solid blow to his chin, strong enough to knock him backward to skid across the floor. He'd never thought anyone could actually be knocked so far away from a simple punch.

"Mister God!" There was the sound of approaching footsteps.

"For once you worthless demon, could you stay the hell away!?" he growled.

"_Unworthy… everything… is…_" The light in its chest had utterly disappeared along with the lively energy, Keima observed now, and in its place were black and grey and nothing else. "_Bl- Black! Black! Everything is… bl- bleak…"_

A weapon emerged, easily summoned to his side. There was a clear malevolence in front of him now, and he had to fight, even if he was tired, even if the stimulant had already left his body in beads of sweat.

"Mister God!" The annoying sound kept on repeating.

"Stay the fuck back!" he yelled, hurling his first class D at the miasma.

"_You dare… you dare look down on me-? I am better…I am…best!"_ There was a sickening, gagging sound as the weapon literally dissolved against the malevolence's body.

Another embedded against it with a dull thump. Then another.

Keima had one more Class B. But he'd only use it after the thing had been weakened—

A tendril shot out, catching him right in the gut. He almost crumbled to his knees, gasping for air. Through watering eyes, he saw the malevolence plucking the weapons from its body, before it turned to him.

"_Away!"_

"You stay right where you are!" He ripped the mouth of the red pouch open and flung the entire thing at the malevolence. A violent puff of smoke exploded up from the floor, engulfing the would-be attacker and stopping it in its tracks. It shrieked unintelligible words, writhing in place as Keima decided to pull out his last weapon.

This weapon was a favorite of his. It resembled a long, thick tube, with a barrel as wide as the head on his shoulders. He primed the weapon—_hand-cannon _it was more like— and took aim. He didn't know how this would affect Ayumi, but at this point, desperate times called for desperate—

"Gack!" A sudden shooting pain in his side almost made him drop the cannon. A tendril had embedded near his spleen. The shock made him shoot once and the shot went wild, blasting the ceiling apart. "Son of a—"

He took aim again.

He felt something slam hard against the top of his head, and Keima's weapon clattered to the floor, firing one last blast that vaporized the window next to him. A moment later, he followed suit, though he strangely found that he could not resist it, as if the strings holding him up had suddenly been frayed. A raw pain seeped from the top to the rest of his head.

He watched, with dispassionate dissociation, as his view quickly turned from the floor to dark, then the malevolence, then the floor again, then back to dark and repeating, in a sort of roller-coaster experience that was accompanied by dull thumps against all the parts of his body.

Keima was aware of someone shouting, someone screaming, and someone crying, though he wasn't sure if it was all in that order. The sounds felt muffled, as if coming from a CM with bad audio.

Ah, he thought. I know this. He recognized the sensation.

_His awareness began to expand._

She didn't know what to do.

In a sense, there were certain protocols to follow, and she'd memorized them all, fervently, that she would not disappoint Hakua, the chief, and Hell.

Though she was a "junior member", that rank alone held more power in Hell and all the planes than any hedge wizard could ever possess in a hundred lifetimes.

So she wasn't useless, as Mister God had said. She just could not channel her powers well and effectively in this situation. And, as she'd said, she was expressly forbidden, as all demons were, from harming humans.

It made the situation a whole lot confusing. And troubling.

Because beneath the fact that she was the junior member of the Runaway Spirit Squad, she was also a very helpful, diligent demon. And that meant she had an obligation to give aid to the human demon hunter, even if he didn't want it. And within this light-leeched world, the only way to give aid was to fight with magics.

But here, the two desires clashed against each other. The first, to do her job without harming the human host of the runaway spirit; against the second, to complete her mission by assisting the human demon hunter.

The mental deliberation had begun as soon as the human had left without her in the darkness, where she had definite trouble seeing. It leaned toward the former when the human had it trapped, and she could assist in non-lethal magics to help the human in whatever it was doing to the spirit.

And then it leaned toward the latter when the spirit's physical manifestation became too strong and started overpowering the human. She had to help!

She tried remembering certain non-lethals, weak enough to distract, but not decimate. Her eyes lit up. Choosing one spell in particular, she traced a symbol through the air with her broom.

The ceiling exploded. She'd missed! Well, she was used to being target practice instead of the other way around. She readied it again, watching with panic as the human was thrown against the ceiling like a rag doll.

Second shot: another miss. The spirit had moved, dragging the human through the floor behind it by the ankles, before flinging him up against the ceiling and down into the floor with bone-crunching thumps.

Elsie winced. Steadying her hands, she aimed the broom again.

She did it! It had hit straight on… and went on and through the spirit and onward to dissipate into air in the distance. She blinked in confusion, and then looked down at herself.

Oh no, she thought alarmingly. She was still invisible! No wonder the spirit had ignored her. This version of cloaking in plain sight also made anything she did seem like nothing on the physical world. That was why the spell had passed through the spirit as if she had just shouted taboo words at it!

Another sickening thump followed, and Elsie was in the process of decloaking herself when the spirit's tendrils curled all around Mister God's body and slammed it against the window.

Elsie fussed about in near-helpless desperation as she watched the human sail through the air and plummet straight down onto the park they had left. She was quick to follow—along with the spirit.

Mister God reached the ground with a concrete splash, and sank into it as if it were made of soft cheese. Elsie fought to stop the tears in her eyes and the lump in her throat, and in the next second her mind recoiled against the sudden scent of blood.

By the Circles, how could she help?

Demons were beings of instinct.

And when Elsie, junior member saw the spirit prepare to deliver an overhead strike on the fallen human, akin to a single piercing nail falling maliciously down on a hapless insect, Elsie did the only thing she could do.

Well, thing_s._

The spike hurt, hurt like a burning torture rod being shoved into her shoulder. She took the attack head on.

In the next instant, she swung her broom: like an energetic pitcher, as if she were sweeping a stray cobweb from the ceiling, and knocked (with an audible thwack) the spirit, howling as it went, away and into a faraway, unseen wall.

In the silence, there was the sound of tinkling glass, and Elsie marveled at the glinting shards, falling like snow from above. Then she choked, letting the broom fall, clapped her hand on her shoulder, and felt the ground give way under her feet.

She watched the midnight display of falling, twinkling stars and wondered whether she'd done a good job.

A shadow passed over her sight.

"_Why-?"_

Major system failure.

Keima recognized the sign and examined it in the same cold manner as sizing up which heroine route to take first, even as he was turned into the Takahara-thing's personal chew toy.

By all rights, Keima should be dead. Or comatose. Or in a state of in-between.

No normal human could have survived repeated trauma to the head and to the chest. It was aggravated by internal bleeding from the malevolence's pointed appendages and the many bones that had fractured beneath his skin.

He would have coughed up blood and all manner of disgusting fluids if he could. But since he'd been bashed on the head, he'd lost all control.

Yet still he could see.

Still he observed everything that was happening to him; curse it all, he hated coming unprepared almost as much as illogical route progression—why why _why_ didn't he bring the big guns—and the marble Sign was getting dangerously close to cracking, ripping open the Secret, the greatest Secret, damn the malevolence, damn Ayumi, damn the demon from Hell and the—

Keima could see it had been pride and complacency that had lead to this humiliation: the culmination of a thousand years of Katsuragi helpless in the grasp of a sworn enemy. But he had too much of the former to even consider it being a failing: it was a flag gone wrong somewhere, an event in the Real that would be rectified, though he didn't know how at this point—

He could blame the demon. Such a tempting, godforsaken, _useless_ fastball to pitch at him. Right. It would be better to blame her. It.

There it was, seeing it from the corner of his leaden gaze as it hovered skittishly nearby like it had always done since the day he'd sensed it. A buzzing, useless fly, trying god knows what with its weird magic.

He swore that if he ever survived and afterwards see that demon again, he would, _he would_—

"Stop!"

And then the demon had done the unthinkable. The illogical.

The futile.

No, not the act of hitting a grand slam with Takahara. The fact that it had jumped in the way of an attack that wouldn't have damaged him as much as the malevolence already had, with a speed and readiness that he could not (and would not) expect from humans, let alone demons from hell. A selfless act. A pointless sacrifice.

When the demon fell to earth, he rose, with an unnaturalness that seemed a given considering the state of his body. He took one step with feet that no longer had any feeling, his hands dangling limply at his side as he looked down at the demon's broken form in the darkness.

"Why?"

She was smiling, delirious, no doubt, a wound the size of a baseball gaping near her neck. That delicious, alluring neck. She didn't (or couldn't?) answer.

"This is not the time for a dying scene, demon! We've only known each other all of five hours! Why the hell would you do something like that?"

The demon was as silent as she had been before they'd ever spoken.

"…this is going beyond being fucking moe. It's not even—you can't even—the label won't even apply to you. You were just being clueless, stupid, _suicidal_…"

A steady trickle of blood now connected his stained kimono to his mouth.

"I'll have you know that was a completely meaningless thing to do. Though in the end… seeing as you don't know _me_, I guess your little bit of heroism is something that can be overlooked." He turned his head, slowly, towards the source of the renewed noise, before looking deep into the demon's eyes. He saw a light still there, something hopeful and alien and wrong.

"Without you, things would have progressed quite nicely and neatly," he continued, choosing to ignore the fact that she had possibly botched his second attempt at an extraction. "Without you, in this current situation, things would have been _simpler._"

He chanced a sideways squint. That malevolence had a fast recovery time.

"And now I find that, grudgingly, I actually can't complete this task without you."

Something whistled in the air, piercing into the unshredded part of his kimono. He carefully pulled it out, feeling it dissolve like black soot through his fingers. An instant later, a more solid, compact projectile came, still connected to its source.

As if pulled by an unknown power, Keima's arm raised up to catch the appendage. He secured it in his grip for one second before he forcefully swung his arm forward. Then came the sound of consecutive crashes and thumps as the Takahara-thing was dragged through each of the first floor classrooms. The appendage pulled taut like a fishing line before snapping, and then there was one final crash.

Keima flung away the snapped-off piece he still held and turned back to the demon. Surprise now joined all the rest he could see in its eyes.

"…Mister… God…?"

It speaks, he thought.

"Do I have to repeat it again? Okay. In order for us to get out of this, demon, I will need your help." He gestured with his other hand, whose fingers flopped about like useless tentacles. "There is no other way. I can only see a bad ending for _me_, whether my body gets blasted apart _right now _by that thing, or later on if this world collapses and that mal gets turned loose upon a world that is largely unaware of its existence. For _you_, well I'm not really sure. A "mission failed"? Receiving torments unending for your failure in a lake of fire and brimstone? I don't care. What matters now is the fact that you're the only other one here who has a vested interest in surviving this situation _and _who can help-"

He delivered a backhand to the charging malevolence, the action looking much like a pathetic slap with his useless hand; but had the greater effect of repelling the malevolence with ease yet again.

"Can't believe it still hurts…" he muttered, appraising the throbbing palm like a piece of meat.

"I'd like to help… Please let me…" Keima refocused. It _could _talk. He wondered then if wounds like that were nothing to demons—He mentally slapped himself. Right. He was in the middle of selling his plan.

Did he really need to? He asked himself.

"You have to _understand_, demon. Clearly. I don't say this lightly. The fact that I'm talking calmly to you like this while we're under siege by the mal is-" A roundhouse kick. That twisted his spine and left him only one leg to stand on. The malevolence's parting blow of a whip-like appendage razed a line of skin on his back. "-a definite sign that this is serious.

"I don't know how demons think. So I truly do not know how you'd react. But I know how humans will react. They'll shout and scream and maybe weep. Their stunted views of the _Real _Real will be challenged, leaving their minds a shuddering, liquefied mess. The experience will be horrifying. (Or it may be enlightening) They may rant, rave, go blind, go deaf, go mute, piss all manner of liquids on themselves, fall into a fetal position, heck they might even faint and die. You need to know that all of the above—and a lot more I won't mention—might happen to you if you do this.

"Would you risk it, just to help me?" Well she'd already risked herself for him once. It wasn't that hard to extrapolate her personality from that act.

But he had to say all this, even if it made him sound like a delusional middle-schooler.

After all, this—this act would be a first in many centuries. No Katsuragi had ever had to make this decision (though the previous Katsuragis would not have gotten into this situation in the first place, a traitorous thought whispered, stabbing his pride in just the right place). Because of that, he would be the first to face whatever consequences would come afterwards.

"Yes…I'll help…" Even up close, Keima couldn't tell what the demon was thinking. He had no idea if that was selflessness or cluelessness. Maybe it was a little of both. A human would have been incoherent and irrational in her situation. On the other hand, self-sacrifice was almost never a logical decision, even for humans.

A flash of pink illuminated the darkness, and the demon sat up with the pink light suffusing her body. Elsie's face looked pained as she kept a palm on her wound. Some of her past vigor made a second appearance on the demon's face. "What will you do… Mister God? Will you be using… love…?"

A sudden, coarse image of a familiar game-time scene occurred to Keima then, and a laugh, inappropriate as it should have been right then, threatened to escape him. He settled for a snort, hiding the amusement on his face by looking away.

Love. Of course.

He _could _use that.

The idea was indeed novel. It was even appropriate for this current situation.

But he just couldn't accept the fact that it had been the demon who'd given it to him.

"…Yes. You could say that." The demon squirmed, which made him ask: "Are you sure you don't want to clear your head first?"

"Eh? Ummm… no… I mean—aren't we still in trouble?" replied Elsie, and to punctuate her query, the seemingly relentless malevolence mustered another assault.

He was now free to smile. If this were an explosive, bombastic prologue to some modern fantasy action game, he'd be unleashing some sort of secret power to end the conflict, involving ESP or magic or some really cool martial arts by now. It was that, or he'd be like the demon here, watching with gawking awe as something incredible and abnormal happened before his very eyes, before launching into a new world that had been closed to him until that moment.

This moment was nothing so special, or dramatic, or even remotely _human _-like. It was mundane as some other prologues went.

He did a jumped and kicked out with his remaining foot, slamming his ankle into the malevolence's gut. It didn't travel as far as before, but it bought him and the demon time.

Keima took the demon's place, collapsing to the ground in a near-senseless heap. This was as far as his body could go. He'd lost too much blood.

"Mister God!" Utter concern was delectable…no, focus, _detectable_ in her voice. The light made her face so much like a plump, ripe fruit…

He clenched a hand.

Looking up, he nodded downward, where the circular buckle was, free of damage and blood. "Quickly… the belt… the buckle… take it…"

"Eh?"

"No time, please, demon! Now! The Sign, seize it, remove it… keep it with you—at all costs."

The dark world seemed stifling now, bearing down on his senses. He could barely see the demon's delicate appendage reach down hesitantly, barely see her jerk violently upon Takahara's resurging bellow, barely even _think_—

In that moment, Keima felt surer of his own body than any human in the world could claim for theirs. Every system sending its dying maydays, every cell of blood scrambling about in chaos, every spark of the synapse, every hormone dying out—

"Remember demon!" he shouted into the encroaching void. "Keep it with you _at all costs_! Atallcosts-! Atolco-! Atelce- teckil- "

There was one, final pain. The earth shook. A volcano erupted.

And so, the body of Keima Katsuragi died.

What follows is a brief, broken account. Most were from the experiences of one Elsie de Lute Ima as she described in her report to the chief of the Runaway Spirit Squad. It was an understandably vague, disjointed account. It was even nearly struck off as invalid and inadequate, were it not for the intercession of several top-performing demons in the same squad.

Where to start, where to start. (Yes, she had said this)

She clutches the circle close, crouched before "Mister God". Mister God's body is nowhere to be found. She claims an impression of carrying a weight far heavier than it seemed.

"_You should… mmm…close that mouth… mmm… or I'll want to close it for you…" _It would say to her.

Its voice speaks without malice, without distress.

It was a thing beyond words, billowing over the park like a nimbus, a shapeless aggregate of primordial foam, with a myriad of protruding, flexible limbs writhing and stretching and receding over its slightly luminescent surface.

("I mean, It didn't feel wrong or anything," she would say in response to a previous question. "But I really don't know how I'd describe it without actually showing you." And she did.)

One of its limbs, slick with a sickly sheen, reaches down and gently flicks Elsie's chin up, closing her wide-open mouth. It said those words she'd said it would say.

There comes a clash: mass against mass, miasma against miasma, tentacle versus…whatever it was the spirit would use.

It is a contest/there will be no contest.

The spirit is/will be in its mercy.

Like macroscopic cells, one will engulf the other in phagocytotic glee.

"_Best… mmm… to look away… mmm… not like… you'll be able to…mmm…"_

Elsie could no longer see the host. She hears (but is not sure) grunts, moans and squeals.

She is then wondering if she made the right call (while holding the circle before her like a talisman).

It shivers, this gigantic, amorphous bag, as if something were struggling to escape. Elsie thinks it might be much like an oversized stomach, after just receiving its fresh, living fill.

"His" work begins.

"_Love… mmm… love… mmm…LOVE…"_

There came a rumbling, at the same time sounding like thunder and a famished belly.

Elsie's own stomach twists, hearing a scream: long, prolonged, and subdued. She wobbles to her feet, ready to start an inquiry, however much she doesn't want to, as though the only thing she wants to do is keep her distance. (Later she would say she could not identify the feeling that had almost made her turn her back on her honor as a demon)

A limb slapped her hand away. Another tries to loop around her waist tentatively.

Still another slaps it away. Several others hover near, still and almost watching, as if they'd waited for something. Waiting on her.

She bristles, as if on the attack. (Elsie still cannot rightly explain why she felt slightly threatened by the limbs, as if they were a threat she hadn't identified).

She asks questions, first in a low murmur, increasing in volume for each time she repeats them. She was uncertain if it had heard.

As if in response, there was a grand assortment of slurping and gurgling, almost like a dozen hungry pig-demons lunching greedily on something wet and slimy. It pulsed and undulated, it foamed and stretched.

But that does not answer her questions. So she stands, waiting, wounded, battered. Oblivious.

It would continue for two minutes. ("Are you certain of that?" she would be asked. She would hesitate, rightfully distrusting the nagging feeling that it had lasted for perhaps close to an eternity. Then she would shake her head, and point out that the human had claimed the pocket dimension would only last fifteen minutes. Dokuru will recall no mention of it in Elsie's account, but will decide not to speak.)

She hears the thump of a body falling to the floor, at the same time that the thing before her visibly expands like a plume of smoke. At the center of the luminous mass, a large human eye the size of a volleyball forms, staring in the manner of a cold, dead fish.

Elsie realized she'd been staring at its back for the whole time.

She then heard several splurts and pops, and what sounded like a sigh (-"…sounded… 'disappointed'? Could you elaborate, Member Elsie?").

She hails the thing cautiously. The circle weighs like a whole firetruck now—but she can still manage. "M-mister… God…?"

Its entirety wobbled, as if it only just realized Elsie's presence. A score of sinuous limbs instantly surged forth and swarmed around her, making her step back in her first instance of fear. At the last moment, they stopped, quivering, poised in midair like sightless snakes about to strike. Two eyes, similar but smaller than the first, oozed into existence, and she had the feeling their gaze was on her.

"_mmm… demon… mmm… are you still you?... mmm… demons… mmm… you are interesting… mmm…" _A single limb seems to hesitate, and then stretch over to touch its tip to the devil's cheek. Elsie remembers cringing. "_mmm… apologies… mmm… it is… mmm… so very tempting… but forbidden… forbidden fruit… _" She fought back the urge to gag and instead stood straight, as proper a demon on a mission as she had to be.

("Under the circumstances", she would be told, "You did very well with that first encounter.")

"Um… is the spirit…?" Elsie tried staring at the unblinking eyes, but the biggest quickly unforms from the shapeless thing's surface at her question.

She would gasp in the next moment, when another group of limbs then emerged from the spot where the eye had been, and in their grasp would be a familiar sight: the smoky, black-white, equally-though-slightly-less-monstrous form of the runaway spirit. Some limbs would hold what looked like wispy, tattered pieces of the spirit, while five others encircled what was the main body: an eyeless horror that had three maws with jagged protrusions that were not teeth, each gnashing separately in outrage.

"_mmm… the human's despair… mmm… feisty… stubborn… wonder why it… mmm… seeded Takahara… _"

Elsie stared transfixed at the squirming thing; furiously trying to remember what she should do be doing. "What will you- are you going to… eat it…?"

Here, and in the debriefing, there is a prolonged pause.

She heard an abrupt, loud squelch, and she had the good sense to jump in surprise.

"_mmm… ark! No… mmm… I thank you for the offer… mmm… but malevolences…_"- here there is a loud hiss—"_…are poor fare… mmm…"_

"Did you-" she blinked, now remembering that she had to pull out the Container, an oversized jar with enough imprisoning magic to trap and transport runaway spirits. A strong suctioning force activated when she opened the lid, and the pieces of spirit held by the limbs began to be sucked in. She now looked like she was doing a balancing act, holding the circle on one hand and the jar that was twice her size on the other.

The dead eye reappeared, though Elsie didn't notice it until the process was already halfway done, and she looked back up to ask a question.

She represses a shiver at its reappearance. "Did you use love, Mister God? What happened to the host?"

"… _mmm… entirely one-sided 'love'… mmm… is what it was… mmm… as to the human…"_ It made a general movement upward, its entire bulk lifting up to reveal the host, now returned to her normal form, lying prone on the ground. Elsie looked at it worriedly while she imprisoned the spirit.

"_mmm… she will not remember… mmm… what had to be done… mmm… I suspect… mmm…" _She wonders what "had to be done", and what it had done to the human, but for some reason she finds herself hesitant. And by now the process is over: the container sealed in yet another pocket dimension separate from this. She tenses, now holding the circle close to her chest. Mister God (the human) told her to keep it always with her, and she would, but there is this other Mister God (she hopes) to consider…

Now, several of its limbs approached, vibrating uncertainly around her. It was a stand-off of sorts, though Elsie would not become aware of it until much later.

"_You may keep it…mmm…"_ it says suddenly. "_It shall have… mmm… outlived its purpose… mmm…" (_The circle would crumble into emerald dust right as she would begin the return trip) There is a grand shifting, and the thing scoops the Takahara's body in its arms. Elsie must have looked apprehensive, as a single limb in front of her shook left and right, as if in denial. "_I must flee… mmm… and seek polymorph once more… mmm… this world… mmm… shall soon collapse… mmm… cooperation is appreciated… mmm… Takahara will be returned… mmm… appropriately…"_

The thing seemed right, Elsie saw. Her vision of the world begun to spindle into many cracks that revealed light. There was a loud rumbling, like a stampede of unseen creatures.

"_There is… mmm… only one love… mmm… I acknowledge… mmm…" _Elsie sees two limbs extend farther than before, over to a spot behind her. They gingerly lift the two halves of the PFP and carry it back to the thing. It absorbs the pieces, looking like they dissolved into the luminescent, slimy surface. The eye disappears then, for the second and last time.

"Who… who are you…?" she asked, right before she was engulfed in blinding light and a wild, roaring sound.

"_mmm…_" she hears it rumble, though she can no longer see it.

"_I am but a God_."

Elsie stood at the center of the park, now painted with colors so bright and vibrant that she had to squint and rub her eyes. She looked around, seeking the thing, but found only the small, relatively lighter buckle, the murmuring buzz of the real world and the faint wind as her companion. She was quick to master herself, and with a gesture of her hands disappeared into the air.

("…and that concludes my report.")


	4. Ayumi: fruit

**Disclaimer - Nothing is claimed by the author, except this story.**

* * *

"… found her in the third floor landing, slumped on the stair railing. Unconscious. Brought her to the infirmary but they didn't find anything wrong. Haven't been able to get an explanation from her yet—we'll know when she's woken up."

"Have any friends of hers said anything? Perhaps it was some sort of 'game'."

"We're looking into it—Kodama-sensei's got their contact numbers. If it turns out they'd got something to do with that, obviously there'll be consequences."

"I do hope it does not come to that," Kusunoki's feigned a mild distress by fluttering her eyes. "But… yes, it is understandable that some responsibility should be shouldered."

A satisfied smile. "Very well spoken, Kasuga-san."

She bowed. "I thank you for your information—and your hard work, sensei."

"It's no trouble. It is right to be concerned for one's fellow students," the teacher said with some self-importance. "You also have the school's gratitude for being the first to discover Miss Takahara. Ah. And I speak for the school in expressing thanks for your generosity today, Kasuga-san. As always, the performance was excellent. It is a shame its conclusion had to be spoiled by this incident."

"It was the Kasuga's pleasure, sensei. If it were not any trouble, would it be possible to get a glimpse of Takahara-san at this time?"

"I don't see any trouble with that, Kasuga-san."

"Thank you very much."

The two made their farewell pleasantries. Kusunoki's expression slipped from impassive to cold when she saw the teacher slip back into the staff office. She turned to face the nearest window, pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest.

Katsuragi, she thought grimly. What happened?

Fleshy Cosplays

Fruits

Something has changed, Keima thought. He leaned back in his leather-chair, away from the screen filled with flame-bound words from ingrates who'd had the audacity to denounce his contributions to society by exposing all the shameful bugs in his latest game, and stared at his hand—clenching and unclenching it. He hummed pensively, before turning his seat and stalking out of the game-room. Now I think it really is time to think, he thought.

The aftermath had been something of a harrowing. At the start, it was easy enough to place Takahara somewhere far from the extraction site: it had actually been the first place he'd slithered towards, when there'd virtually been no students detected near there.

The next part, the return from the school to the Katsuragi manse and into the inner family vaults was a big ramp-up in difficulty. The Kasuga heiress would've sense him (in that moment, though, the self that was Keima didn't really play for _any _team) if he got anywhere near the front gates. The sports fields and surrounding sections were too open, with scattered groups of students just waiting to become witnesses. If it had been raining, Keima could have discreetly hitched a ride along the many artificial streams, but Keima could not be afforded the convenience on that day.

That only left the sewers.

It was not as if they were hard to access as Keima's entire body could fit into the eye of a needle if he willed it. But sewers, by their name alone, were absolutely disgusting places to be. It was also the first time, and that meant navigating to where the manse was became a frantic groping along filthy passageways, and furtively peeking out into manholes to get proper bearings.

Not that Keima feared detection. Keima just wasn't _allowed_.

Halfway through the journey, Keima felt the first warning signs: a ripple of pain across its entire turgid frame. The blasted ancient Katsuragi seal had detected that its latest monstrous scion was without its Sign, and was now exerting the inherent magics of the Pact to give Keima its first warning.

_Seek the Flesh, or Oblivion._

Keima then crushed hapless vermin beneath its vast bulk in its haste, damaging several sewer access points when it barreled through for a shortcut. Keima didn't spare any attention to the implications of the flow being redirected through its actions. Keima only had ten minutes to get back home after all.

When Keima found itself staring into green-blue water of the river, it received several jolts. One of consternation that it had misread the signs and had ended up several kilometers off course, and one from the second warning—there would only be Three. Keima then stretched and extended, forming a streamlined shape that allowed it to cover many meters in one propelled crawl.

Keima soon received another jolt, though it was milder this time. It was a psychic prodding from the manse that declared it was home. Wasting no time, Keima burst through the drain pipe of one of its bathrooms, sending the tiles flying, formed a spherical hole in the door, carved S-shaped marks on the corridor floor and knocked over a valuable vintage vase in the living room before it paused in front of the door to the Vaults, placing the broken PFP reverently on a stand near it, and then finally oozed through the secret door.

Inside, Keima took a deep, relieved breath (figuratively of course), and set to reforming itself back into Keima Katsuragi (M): student.

He'd first sensed the difference in that time, though it had seemed insignificant.

Keima had already tucked his skin snugly, sewing any open gaps with a focused meticulousness. He had keyed the new Sign into a newer location—hanging inconspicuously from a collar-shaped necklace. He'd had the key that anchored _him _to the Keima body flaunted about his waist for as long as he could remember.

Keima knew the process had been successful when he was brutally assaulted by the first pangs of biting hunger and intense thirst. But the Katsuragi Vaults had been well-stocked for that purpose: seemingly as well-prepared for a nuclear holocaust with preserved food and fluids as with the sudden eclosion of its heir.

And it was in eating from a rock-hard candy bar that he felt the first cues of change.

He paused in the middle of his pacing, as he'd wanted to stuff himself quickly so he could get back to more important things. Keima turned his head left and right, in the manner of an inquisitive bird. It felt strange, then, in that moment, because unless he was still "alive" he was now feeling as if he had eyes on the back of his head. It was not as if he could _see_ rightly—merely getting vague impressions of the corridor behind—but he had the certainty of the location of certain objects before he looked away, like the barrels and boxes of food and the painted partition leading back to the ritual chambers. Keima hadn't had this sensation before, not even when quaffing that body-enhancing tonic.

Had he done the reskinning process wrong? Keima chewed uneasily. It had been admittedly his very first time doing so, but he had been very thorough, taking each and every step slowly and surely. It had been like the time he'd hunted bugs in that damned game: one had to take care with each flags to pick up or else be shoved back into a bad (or worse, a _normal)_ end.

Was it possible he'd used the wrong body? His hand dipped down to his crotch, and felt the necessary male parts there. The sudden, absurd thought disappeared.

There was that hint of doubt of course, of something he was responsible for, but his pride wouldn't allow that possibility. Besides, everything felt fine otherwise. He'd then done a once-over of the new body, preening and wheeling about in front of the water tank's reflective surface. No visible scars.

He sighed, taking one deep mouthful of liquid before eyeing his reflection again.

Nothing _felt_ different.

With a halfhearted shrug, Keima headed out of the Vaults, his mind now turning to the matter of the malevolence. It had been a net loss in everything but objective. He'd lost his entire frigging body, not to mention a whole bunch of weapons and tools, a Katsuragi curios hoard, and chemicals each the worth of a scooter. Owing to the circumstances, he'd have to meet Kasuga at the earliest to confirm—

He paused. Oh right, the demon had taken the malevolence. To where, he hoped never to learn, unless something went wrong. He hoped Elsie would keep to her word. Keima didn't want to contemplate what he would do should some class A be reported going to town downtown.

That had been last night. He'd taken a quick dip in the bath before seeing to his PFP's disposal. The eerie feeling of something amiss hadn't truly left his mind, but he had seen to the broken PFP first with a solemn manner, extracting the damnable game from it before honored disposal. That was the only other machine from the Yokkyun anniversary celebration that wasn't locked in a secret air-tight container (and he considered the mere thought of unearthing the other as disgraceful).

Keima was then faced with the ignoble notion of not living up to his title as lord of conquests, as he hadn't been able to complete the bug-ridden game. Unable to sleep and disinclined to examine himself further for the peculiar post-reskinning feeling, Keima had then spent the rest of the night wading through blogs and web-sites, a virtual Savonarola battling haters and other anonymous miscreants and condemning the game to the darkest pits of Hell. The Hell in his mind, anyway.

That recollection took but three seconds in his mind, and in that period he had reached the corridor outside his room. He glanced about the empty, silent space—narrow, polished floors, banal furniture and walls he'd ordered painted white when he'd come into his own as heir. One end led to the inner garden, with several ponds and assorted flora to give off the pretension of culture. It also led to an elevated area where a mini-observatory had been built over an older, centenarian observatory. It overlooked the city, and the old one had had a bell and fire-signal receptacle which was sister to the one on the Kasuga's hill.

The other led to the main Hall, which linked to the entrance lobby that led to the outside. He let his feet lead him there.

He did a double-take, blinking at the meager sunlight filtering through from the main door. He seemed to have completely lost track of time. Shrugging off the mild annoyance (and the constant sensation of seeing the wasted hallway and the stairs to the second floor _behind_ him), Keima strode to the door and sprung it open.

Just as expected, there were—

Three? Keima wondered. Three stapled sets of class printouts lay near the door, usually placed there by an anonymous, helpful classmate (and obviously _**not**_a _**friend**_) when he couldn't answer the door to receive them himself—and that was almost always every single day.

But the fact that he saw _three_ sets now implied that that same amount of time had passed. And to Keima, that was impossible. He couldn't have been battling those trolls for over three days! What was going on?

Shaking his head as if to clear off a stray, unfavorable thought, Keima reached down to pick up the—

Why is that thing levitating? Keima now wondered. A moment later, his eyes widened and he drew back in shock. The papers slowly flapped downward, settling in a flower-like pattern over the other sets.

Keima quickly checked himself. Normal. Everything was normal. He looked back.

Yet in the moment he merely _thought_ of picking up another set, he saw it float up once more, and he could feel the slight pull in his mind, like a distant thrum of a migraine, that indicated that yes, he was the one responsible.

_Down, _Keima thought, and now there were two paper flowers.

He rubbed his palms together, his eyes now gazing off into space.

Something's _definitely _changed.

He wasn't an ESPer or superhuman by any means (which would have been more than a bit redundant). That meant that whatever that freaky act was would be connected more firmly with the "him" that was Secret and which had never manifested a power like this before.

Who knew what else had changed from Takahara's extraction?

I have to recheck again, Keima decided. Maybe he really _did _do something wrong. A body part not sutured correctly, a spirit point he had failed to plug up, _something_.

Or maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was just a faulty body he'd been given. Or the materials he'd used were shitty knock-offs that he couldn't have reasonably quality-checked before, in which case he'd been ripped off and now had to lop someone's head off.

He was just about to head back insde when he felt a buzzing sensation in his senses. Muttering darkly to himself, Keima narrowed his eyes and turned around, choosing not to "see" through the eyes at the back of his head.

And he then beheld the demon, her form framed by sunlight, smiling and waving cheerfully outside the gate and standing next to a red-shaped bag twice her size. She then rapped her broom on the bars, making a faint, metallic clanking that resounded through the early morning air.

"Good morning, Mister God! May I come in?"

He blinked. He stared. He stooped in a manic fit and gathered up all the papers with his own human hands. He looked down at them, then back at the demon, who was beaming expectantly. Keima let them all drop to a messy clutter at his feet. He kicked feebly, sending several flapping into the bushes.

Keima rubbed his forehead, trying and failing to keep the explosion from happening. Of all the—

"What the _hell_ are you doing here!?"

* * *

AN: Merlin here. Hello again, after a long time, to old readers, and of course, to the new.

For you old readers, I'm sorry to say I'm currently finding it hard to reconnect with most of what I'd written here. It is like a king who was tricked by a witch to fall asleep and who would wake up centuries later to a land he no longer recognizes. He sees his influence in the nation he helped build, but finds he can no longer quite see it as his anymore. The world has long ago reluctantly left him behind.

I'm very grateful for the support I'd gotten from my friends and colleagues, and I'm currently on the way of recovery with copious sessions and medications to regain my old lifestyle and livelihood. But everything has to change and _has_ changed, not just in my environment but myself as well. I've gone through many paradigm shifts just to reach here.

I truly apologize for sounding so glum. Needless to say, if you enjoyed or appreciated this, then it's good, and if you didn't then hopefully you've stopped before spending too much time on it. (though why you'd be reading this bottom note is beyond me) As implied by the Complete tag, I do not know if I'll continue this or even continue writing fanfiction; but I've scattered the customary seeds so I can later easily pick up where I leave it off-much like in my other stories.

A small note on the story: The idea isn't terribly novel: I'd read several such visual novels that actually had tasteful, almost-cathartic story progressions instead of being simple sex romps. Perhaps the premise of the harem protagonist secretly being a tentacle monster is not at all farfetched a premise.

A good day to you all then, and may the vistas of imagination be ever opened to you!


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